The Mirror of Alchimy by Roger Bacon

Description

The Mirror of Alchimy is a book attributed to Roger Bacon, first published in English in 1597. A short medieval alchemical manual (also known under the Latin title Speculum Alchemiae), it presents a practical, step-by-step account of the art of making an "elixir" capable of perfecting imperfect metals. The text is concise and technical rather than mystical, treating alchemy as a corporal, metallurgical craft: it outlines the nature and generation of minerals, the seven metals, and the basic operations and materials the author regards as necessary for the philosopher’s stone or medicinal tincture. Though long ascribed to the thirteenth-century scholar Roger Bacon, modern scholarship treats the work as pseudepigraphic — likely written by an anonymous author between the 13th and 15th centuries and circulated in Latin and French before the English translation appeared. Its transmission (Latin compendia and French renderings before the 1597 English printing) helped make its concise, praxis-focused presentation one of the few alchemical manuals available in English in the early modern period, and it influenced how alchemy was popularly understood as a practical, artisanal science as well as a symbolic tradition.